What Your Private Slack Channels Say About Your Company’s Culture
With more workplaces hiring far-flung employees and leaning on Slack to bridge the gap, work culture is Slack culture
By Pavithra Mohan
Kally Lavoie was only introduced to Slack earlier this year, after part of her company had already migrated onto the messaging platform. By the time her office joined the company’s Slack workspace, their colleagues in San Francisco and Boston had already found their rhythm. “It definitely felt, at the beginning, like we were slotted into their culture,” Lavoie says. “It took a few months to create our own culture.”
But almost immediately, the fresh crop of Slack users discovered the Giphy integration. Soon enough, channels and DMs were littered with the party parrot emoji. Lavoie and her neighbors in the office — a group she describes as her pod — found a room of their own.
“We have an open office, so it started as our pod, to talk about when we were getting coffee or going for lunch,” she says. “From there it spiraled. We included teammates and other friends. It definitely became the private friend channel for our group.”
In some workplaces, Slack communications start to take the place of face-to-face socializing. But in…
